A mistake of a Spanish explorer led the maps to show California as an island for over a century.
For more than two centuries, the maps represented California not as a peninsula, but like an island -A geographical error that persisted due to influential and historical misunderstandings.
The first 16th century European maps, including those of Gerard Mercator, initially portrayed California correctly as a peninsula. However, this situation changed at the turn of the 17th century due to a critical error committed pela explorer Espanhola Antonia de la Ascension.
After an expedition with Sebastián Vizcaíno, Antonia de La Ascensión wrongly recorded that California was separated from the continent by a vast “California Mediterranean Sea”. His statement was repeated by other explorers, including Juan de Iturbe and Antonia Vázquez de Espinosa, who insisted that California was an island and should be represented as such in the maps.
This erroneous idea gained even more strength in 1650, when the famous French cartographer Nicolas Sanson incorporated California Island into his map. Given its influence, other cartographers followed the example, solidifying the error in large circulation maps for over a century. Despite the emerging evidence of explorers who proved that California was in fact part of the continent, the myth lasted until the eighteenth century, explains the.
The origins of this error can be found in Spanish novel THE SAMPANDIAN SERGAS1510, which described an island called California, governed by the fictional Queen Calafia. Some historians believe that this romanticized description influenced the first explorersmixing fiction with geographical interpretation. In addition, the idea of an island may have been appealing to European settlers and traders, as the passage of water would be advantageous for navigation.
The persistence of this error enhances the historical tendency to rely on authorized sources over new evidence. Only after further explorations and verifications did the cartographers finally corrected California’s representation, firmly establishing its true geography.
